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Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 8:34 pm
by Mike p
This I think is an aberrant female common blue, could someone confirm this for me please.......Thank you for your help. I think I`ve put this in the wrong place sorry.
An aberrant female common blue? brasenose woods, Oxford. by
poacher rtd, on Flickr
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 9:06 pm
by David M
That's quite an insect!
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 10:42 pm
by Tony Moore
Lovely shot, especially with the yellow showing the antennae so perfectly...
Tony M.
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 4:43 pm
by Allan.W.
Hi Mike,
That's a fabulous female Common blue,you pictured there Mike, lovely shot, you may like to have a look on the Natural history museum website at the Cockayne collection which has several pages of Common blue abberations on show,a really useful website,unfortunately a lot of Common blue abs; are un-named.
regards Allan.W.
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 7:52 pm
by Gruditch
I took this one a couple of hours ago. Unlike the surrounding area, these very blue females are common on this site.
Regards Gruditch
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 8:36 pm
by MikeOxon
Mike p wrote:This I think is an aberrant female common blue, could someone confirm this for me please.......Thank you for your help. I think I`ve put this in the wrong place sorry.
The double fringe confirms this as a Common Blue. I agree that this is an unusual specimen and I assume it is a female, although the abdomen is quite narrow. It is not that unusual for females to have plenty of blue scales on the upper wing surfaces but this one seems to have virtually no red around the spots.
I think it is a beautiful photo of an interesting specimen.
Gruditch's photo is the more usual type of 'blue' female but it's not clear where it was taken.
Mike
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 8:46 pm
by David M
Gruditch wrote:I took this one a couple of hour ago.
What interests me with this one, Gary, are the silvery patches at the apex of each forewing.
I've never seen this before.
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Mon May 25, 2015 8:13 am
by Gruditch
apicta-thetis
I haven't the first clue with aberrations, probably as Mike says, just the usual very blue female we get here. Taken in Hampshire, on private land btw.
Regards Gruditch
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Mon May 25, 2015 9:43 am
by Neil Freeman
Lovely photos of a couple of beautiful butterflies Mike and Gruditch
I took the photo of the female Common Blue below near Solihull last year and posted it in my diary at the time where it prompted a few comments. Like Mikes, as well as being very blue, it has reduced Orange around the hindwing spots. At the time I had never seen this before and Mikes example is still only the second one I have seen like this.
There did seem to be a lot of very blue females around last year which I remember quite a few people commented on.
![Solihull 01.06.2014 278resize.JPG (540.87 KiB) Viewed 1566 times Common Blue female - Shadowbrook Meadows Solihull 01.06.2014](./files/thumb_10101_74bdd2d39cbb72665c531016c69a0aba)
- Common Blue female - Shadowbrook Meadows Solihull 01.06.2014
Cheers,
Neil
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Mon May 25, 2015 11:02 am
by Tony Moore
One from last year - not as blue as the others, but the 'bluest' I had ever seen at the time.
Tony M.
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Mon May 25, 2015 3:12 pm
by CFB
Here's the bluest one I've ever seen, in the Alpes-Maritimes in May 2012.
--
Colin
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Mon May 25, 2015 8:39 pm
by David M
This is the most extreme I've ever encountered:
Still, it's nothing like as extreme as those completely lacking the orange lunules.
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Mon May 25, 2015 10:27 pm
by bugboy
Since we're sharing, here's my bluest from back in 2007:
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Mon May 25, 2015 10:57 pm
by millerd
And to chip in as well: this one is from Harmondsworth Moor, near Heathrow. 11th May 2011.
Dave
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Tue May 26, 2015 10:23 am
by Mike p
Thank you everyone for your help, this year I`m seeing a number of very blue female common blues as well as the normal coloured ones, Once again thank you for your help.
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Tue May 26, 2015 1:11 pm
by Gruditch
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/ ... xonID=8765
Does anyone think this could be my one
Regards Gruditch
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Tue May 26, 2015 2:38 pm
by MikeOxon
This is developing into an interesting thread! When I commented before, Gary, that your pic looked like the 'usual' blue female, I was only referring to the red lunules, which are conspicuously absent on
Mike p's initial photo. I've been doing some reading since and most of my books say very little about aberrations in the Common Blue - mostly concerned with underside spots and streaks.
Yours certainly looks like the Cockayne specimen you found but I've not managed to find a full description of 'Apicta-thetis'. The trouble with Abs is that lots of people like to name them and then it turns out that several different names describe the same thing. Hopefully one of our 'real' experts will be along soon
Mike
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Tue May 26, 2015 3:28 pm
by Mark Colvin
Goodson and Read (1969), in their
Aberrational and Subspecific Forms of British Lepidoptera, list at least 277 named aberrations of the Common Blue. The description for ab.
apicta-thetis is as follows:
Good hunting.
Kind regards. Mark
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Tue May 26, 2015 6:03 pm
by David M
It'll do for me.
Thanks for the attachment too, Mark.
Re: Aberrant female common blue
Posted: Tue May 26, 2015 7:45 pm
by bugboy
Not as extreme as some of the previous but I found her this afternoon:
who also had an interesting underside:
![IMG_8075.JPG (768.98 KiB) Viewed 1325 times Same female underside](./files/thumb_13753_0a68a50b31d89c0d5235eca7d347f9b2)
- Same female underside